Clenched Soul
by Briar Hecate
Summary: Edward and Winry deal with the consequences and royalties of growing older and finding out about life and love. A little dark. Based on the poem Clenched Soul by Pablo Neruda. WinXEd


A poem fic about Winry, before and after Ed and Al get back from the gate. Thanks for reading and if you liked this one then you should check out my other fic, If You Forget Me. They're similar, but at the same time different. Thank you and please review! This one is dedicated to my sister, who would love Full Metal Alchemist if she'd just give it a chance... **:)** You're a driving force in my life, don't let anyone tell you that 'You Can't'.

..........

**Clenched Soul By Pablo Neruda**

_We have lost even this twilight.  
No one saw us this evening hand in hand  
while the blue night dropped on the world_.

She lives like she should. Living quietly, politely. Everyone knows that those boys were bad news. No one trusted them from the beginning. They can't understand why she lets them come crawling back to her. They'll only end up breaking her heart again. Why does she trust them? they ask. They stare at her. They stare and see her pain that she has gotten good at hiding lately. She lives quietly, polietly. She lives like she should.

They think that ever since they left, Winry Rockbell would finally get the chance to move on. She came from a good, respectable family. She had good morals. She had matured. Her temper had slowly calmed with age. What was wrong with her? Does she not realize that boys were falling for her left and right; boys that wouldn't give any other girl the time of day? Does she not look in the mirror and she her beauty? Does she not work on her automail and see her talent? What's wrong with that girl? they would ask.

And the smart ones would look at her. Look at the sadness in her deep blue eyes. Look at her body that was starting to deteriorate. Look at her hair that had grown long and wild. Look at the clothes that had dulled and gotten baggy. And they would see it. They would respond; It's those Elric boys.

And the others would try to see it, but no new answer would come. So, they'd say; The Rockbell girl's a good girl. She's not sad. She's just living like she should.

She lives like she should. She lives quietly and politely.

..........

_I__ have seen from my window  
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops_.

..........

He's made mistakes. More mistakes than he can count. Ever since he's gotten back from the gate he's tried to make them up. Oh, he's tried. But she doesn't notice. She doesn't notice how hard he tries, how much he wants to make it up to her. He knows that he's hurt her. He knows that he was the main cause for all of her pain. He's sorry for that, but she doesn't notice.

He often wonders why he puts up with her apathy. He's grown much taller and a lot more handsome. He has girls that fall for him left and right. All he has to do is take his pick. There are pretty brunettes, scandalous redheads, and buxom blondes. But, he doesn't give them the time of day.

Because none of them compare to her. They never will. They never can be what she is.

There are those random nights where he does try to compare. And in the darkness he tries to picture her instead of the girl who's name he's already forgotton. But it's never any use. She can never compare to her. Her eyes weren't the same deep blue. Her hair not quite the same length. Her voice not as soothing. Her body not as slender. Her skin not as perfect.

So he leaves. He leaves where he's been for the past while and travels. Because in his travels and in his adventures, he can forget. Maybe even if he forgets only for a second, he still thanks a higher power for that moment. Because in the forgetting, he can disregard his pain, her pain. And he can picture her without seeing the dark, tired circles under her eyes and the ribs that had only begun to show under her shirts. He see's the girl he remembered. A girl full of life and passion, willing to accept him and his mistakes.

And then that second's gone faster than it came.

But he knows that the next time he leaves, he'll forget. So he looks at the horizon, and walks towards it.

..........

_Sometimes a piece of sun  
burned like a coin in my hand._  
..........

Winry stares at the bottom of the kitchen sink. It's been five years. She's twenty-four and it's been five years since Ed and Al returned from the gate. She smiles and sighs. She remembers them walking up that path, all careworn and in strange clothes. She remembers how they were before they left and how five years has made them into men. Into strong, handsome, charming men.

"How do you think he is?" she asks, turning to Al, who reads the paper while sipping coffee.

"Who?" he asks, pulling his glasses off his face to look at her properly.

"Who do you think?" she asks, a little more harshly than usual.

Al offers her a knowing smile, "I'm sure he's fine Winry."

She rolls her eyes, "It's been three weeks without a letter. Do you think that ass would even have the common courtesy to send a scrap of paper?"

"No," he tells her in a final tone.

Winry sits at the chair across from him, flustered. "But why not Al?"

"Because it's Ed and knowing Ed, he's far too busy with some idiot to write his family a letter," he chuckles a little at Winry's masked concern.

She wonders where all the years went. Ed and Al had tried their very hardest to make up for everything. That made her mad. In her eyes they didn't do anything wrong. It was her heart that had to heal and become stonger. It was her that had to grow a thicker skin. The Elric brothers shouldn't blame themselves for her weakness.

She worries about him often. She knows that in her heart nothing can happen between them. She's thought about it every so often. And she thinks that Ed could possibly take care of her. Heal her wounds, polish her up again, make her feel young once more. She's afraid of her feelings though. She's afraid of dying alone and painfully like Trisha. Alone on her death bed, with no one there to love her and comfort her.

So she keeps them hidden, along with the rest of her strong emotions. She learned long ago not to show too much feeling. People die, people leave, people get hurt, and then you move on, she tells herself.

Den died, she moved on. Pinako died, she moved on. Her parents died, she moved on. Hughes died, she moved on. And Ed... Ed hadn't died, but he wasn't there either. All she had to do was move on from him....so why was that so hard?

Al sees Winry finger the table cloth absent mindedly. She stares out the kitchen window deep in thought. In a way he'd like to kill Ed for the pain he's caused her. But the second half of him, the bigger, nicer, more reasonable half would just like Ed to admit his feelings for her.

He sighs heavily and sips his coffee. _He'll do it someday,_ he reminds himself, _someday_.

..........

_I remembered you with my soul clenched  
in that sadness of mine that you know.  
_..........

Ed sipped his beer. He wondered how she was; what she was doing; if she cared enough to miss him. He had decided to drown himself in some liquor tonight. Not that he did it often, but there were times that called for a drink at a bar. Maybe some cheap feminine company to top it all off. He likes to shed his chivalrous skin whenever he goes out at night.

He was thinking too much about her. He could hardly complete the task Mustang had given him. It was one of those days. Days where he couldn't get her out of his mind.

Tonight he was thinking about the night they shared together three years ago.

A drunken charade that lasted only one night. Something that they had both tried hard to forget and move on from. But he couldn't. Not yet anyways. A part of him wanted to remember it. Remember her beautiful nakedness in the moonlight. The taste of her long hair. The sweat on her angelic skin. Her eyes wide with curiosity and nervousness. Remember the way it felt to be with her. The pain and the pleasure and the hate and the love all braided into one emotion he couldn't name. Maybe it was lust. He did lust after her a little anyways. It was hard not too.

He sucked in a deep breath.

A man with the smell of liquor on his lips begins talking to him.

"Hey, you're the professor from the university down they way... aren't ya?" he asks, bottle in hand.

Ed nods, "Yeah."

He really wishes that the drunk would leave him alone. He's too busy thinking about her to partake in any conversation right now.

"They say you're a prodigy...how old are ya, twenty-two?" he asks, coming over to sit beside him.

"Twenty-four," he answers with a lack of patience.

"Twenty-five? Geez, what in the hell are you doing getting drunk tonight? Don't you have a pile of money and a pretty wife waiting for 'ya at home?" inquires the man.

"Its twenty-_four_ and I'm not married," the money part of the man's question had been true, but he doesn't feel like bragging tonight.

"Not married? Fuck... I'd expect you to have a little lady and seven kids running around, driving 'ya insane,"

"Well, I don't," he spits, annoyed.

"There's a girl though," says the man, sipping vodka.

Ed doesn't respond.

"There's a girl then. You wouldn't be gettin' drunk here for any other reason..."

"There's a girl, so what?"

"Is she pretty?"

Ed sneers at the comment, "Of course she is."

"What does she look like?"

"She's blonde, and blue-eyed and slender."

"Sounds pretty,"

"Yeah, but she's got one hell of a temper on her. You wouldn't want to get on her bad side..." he trails off.

"Sounds like you should marry her."

"I can't,"

"Why not?"

Ed sighs heavily, "Because I keep on askin' her and she keeps on sayin' no."

"Why in the hell does she pull that?"

"I don't know," Ed tells the man truthfully, "some bullshit about how she's '_not ready for a long term relationship_'."

"Sounds like bullshit,"

"It is."

"But you should ask her again anyways," he advises.

"Why?"

"Because sooner or later she has to say yes,"

..........

_Where were you then?  
Who else was there?  
Saying what?  
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly  
when I am sad and feel you are far away?  
_..........

It's been a few more years and she can't help but see how mature he's gotten. He's teaching at a university and works for the military part-time. He's been making obscene ammounts of money. He's famous around here. He's drop-dead gorgeous and she knows that any girl would die for just a chance to get Edward Elric in bed with her. Something's she's already done. She cringes at the memory.

He's come around here a few times, trying to tell her that he's going to marry her. Those proposals always end in arguments. Arguments that they both never win and the next day the stand there and laugh at eachother. The whole process has repeated itself for about once a month these past two years. The answer is always no and she belives that it always will be.

She just can't understand why he refuses to give up. She won't give into him though. Her number one question to him is _why_ they have to get married. The whole concept just seems too....too final.

He's come to see her again and they walk around a market in Risembool. She looks at nonsense and knick-knacks, trying to ignore the fact that his eyes are all over her. Watching her with an intent that she can't quite put her finger on.

"How are things?" he asks her, picking up a carving and examining it.

"Good, the automail buisness it going well. How's the teaching job?"

He shrugs his shoulders, "Nothing new."

"It must be nice to live in Central this time of year," she mentions.

"You could always come and live with me for a little while..." he suggests.

She replies with a simple, "No."

"Why not Win?" he demands, his anger rising.

"Don't take it so personally. I just don't want to,"

"What do you want from me then?"

"Friendship,"

One-worded answers infuriate him. "Well, do you know what I want from you?" he asks, trying to control his temper.

"I already know, you only ask me about it every month,"

Okay, so it wasn't one-word, but her reply still makes him go crazy. "You have to say yes sooner or later," he mutters.

"What makes you think I owe you anything?" she says spinning around and glaring at him.

"Well, I don't know. Maybe ever since we made the decision to sleep together every so often, I've wanted more than just secretive drunken sex,"

Colour rushes to her cheeks, "Keep your voice down!"

"So you're embarassed about it?"

"Ed look- can we just not talk about this right now?" she asks in a whisper, vendors looking at them with funny looks on their faces.

"Well Winry when would be a good time?!" he asks, now yelling.

"Not now!" she yells back.

Ed threw his arms up into the air. "Fuck this," he shouts, "there is no way I need this stress!"

Winry covers her face with a hand, hoping to conceal her reddened skin. She is more angry than anything. Ed has the car and it is a long walk home, but she needs the time to think about everything. She couldn't marry him. She knows it would never work out. He had his job and that would mean that she would have to move to Central. She would be left alone a lot.

She could actually bring her automail with her, and work in Central. And being by herself for a few odd weeks at a time couldn't really be bad, could it? It had a lot to do Ed though. Ed, was well...she couldn't explain it. There was something about him, maybe it was her fear of loosing him again, of being hurt and not healing this time round.

She pulls her jacket closer to her, walking in the living room. Ed's in there, reading. He hardly notices her pressence.

She throws her jacket on the floor and walks into the kitchen. Reaching into the cupboard under the sink, she grabs the bottle of clear vodka. He walks in after her. He sees her take a huge sip and then offer him the bottle.

"Wanna have shameless, drunken sex again?" she asks him, as he forces the clear liquor down his throat.

"Oh yeah," he says, putting the bottle on the counter and walking over to kiss her.

The deed is quick and satisfying enough for the both of them. Somehow they managed to make it upstairs, to his bedroom. Well, it was his when he stayed with her. He looks over at her, her eyes are closed and she's breathing. Sometimes he wishes that they wouldn't have to use drunkeness as an excuse to sleep with eachother. Why couldn't it be irresponsibility? Or maybe recklessness? Hell, he would even take experimentation if she offered it.

He plants kisses down her neck, wondering if now would be the time to wake her up for round two. Her eyelids flutter a little and she rolls closer to him. He places his arm around her protectively. She usually doesn't allow him to hold her after they do this, but today is special. He holds her close, so he can feel her soft heartbeat. This sex is more than just pleasure or an escape from lonliness for the both of them.

And that's what scares her.

.........

_The book fell that always closed at twilight  
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.  
_..........

He remembers her like she should be remembered. With happiness in her eyes and a world that fell down at her feet. He forgets her pain and sadness and longing. He remembers her like she should be remembered. And tonight's the night. The night where she'll be his forever, and she will stop slipping through the cracks of his fingers.

Of course, he'll have to ask her again. But, this time he belives that it will be different. Because they've sort of-almost-really accepted their love for one another. And there's no turnining back. And for some reason he's alright. Right now, in this moment its do or die. But for some reason he's okay with it because deep down he knows that Winry's too kind and too gentle to leave him and his heart out in the cold.

So he finds courage as he walks through the front threshold. He sees her mopping the floor of the kitchen and twirling around the kitchen in a pale blue sundress. Her hair is high on her head, in a messy bun. She sings a beautiful song in a different language. He doesn't recognize it, maybe the language is Ishbalan. The sunlight catches her eye and lights up one side of her body.

She looks angelic.

He takes a moment to collect himself. For only a few seconds she looked like the Winry he remembered her to be. With the happiness in her eyes and a world that fell down from her feet. She blushes and laughs.

He joins in.

His heart swells for her. And although the new Winry posseses her body for the time being, he believes that maybe he'll be able to coax out the old one. In time, anything is possible. So for the meantime, he leans against the frame of the doorway and watches her run around, turning off the music and putting the mop away. She does this almost in warp speed.

He smiles.

Because she is almost like he has remembered her to be.

..........

_Always, always you recede through the evenings  
toward the twilight erasing statues. _  
..........

Thank you! I hoped you enjoyed it! Please review!


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